Quantitative susceptibility mapping is a new technique and its processing pipeline has to be validated before clinical practice. We described an easy to build magnetic resonance (MR) susceptibility phantom based on iron sucrose.

In a plastic container, Eppendorf tubes containing increasing iron sucrose concentration ranging from 0 to 60μg Fe/mL were inserted in an agarose gel. To estimate susceptibility, multiple coronal gradient echo acquisitions were performed with varying angle of the phantom relative to the   field, ranging from 30 to 90°. Quantitative susceptibility maps were reconstructed using the   and   norm of total variation using Split Bregman approach. Iron concentration was finally estimated from the susceptibility in the tubes.

In   susceptibility and estimated iron concentration were not different from the real values while   underestimated the susceptibility. A correlation was found between the angle of the phantom and the difference between real and estimated iron concentrations. The results highlight the importance of this validation by emphasizing the effects of various reconstruction parameters as well as acquisition conditions. Using optimal parameters, the quantitative susceptibility mapping provides a very good estimation of the iron concentrations in the phantom.